Become a Friend of the Carroll Public Library, and join us in our mission of nurturing minds & building community

Thank You

Become a Friend of the Carroll Public Library, and join us in our mission of nurturing minds & building community

Please help our organization grow by becoming a Friend. Meetings are held six times a year (Jan., March, May, July, Sept., and Nov.) at 6:30 in the City lobby. We also hold an annual book sale in the fall. Annual dues are $10.00, and Lifetime membership $150.00. We are always looking for people willing to help with various activities and to serve on a committee. If any of these look like something you’d be interested in, please contact us!

Put books in order - 1st & 3rd Wednesdays 10:00-11:00

Set up for an event (move chairs & tables)

Make phone calls

Serve on a committee

About

The History Of The Carroll Public Library

The Clio Club, named after a Greek muse of history, first met in 1884. Gossip and questions of religion and politics at meetings were not allowed. The women first met weekly and then monthly in a two room building on Sixth Street between Main and Adams Streets in the business section of town. A library was the primary project of the club. The minutes of the April 1893 meeting record the first discussion of a library.

March 18, 1894, a library was ready for patrons with a bookcase and 523 books valued at $266. Patrons paid a fee of one dollar a year or five cents a volume to use the library. Members of the club took turns serving as librarians. Initially the books were kept in one of the two rooms the organization used. Later the books were moved to the YMCA to be kept rent free with the Clio Club paying for heat and light.

A petition for a free library was successful in 1894. The collection, which had grown to twelve hundred books, was turned over to the town on January 1, 1900. Fundraising for a new library building had been unsuccessful until Andrew Carnegie gave $10,000 for a new library building. The collection was moved from Woodmen Hall on Sixth Street to the new Carnegie Library Building January 11, 1906.

The library remained at the Carnegie building until a new library was built in 1975 as part of the new Community Center project during Urban Renewal. A human chain was organized to pass the books from the old building to the new building a block away. Library service has expanded to include other communities in the county.

The Carnegie Library Building still stands and now houses the Carroll County Historical Museum. Excerpted from "This Place Called Carroll County, Iowa" by Marilyn Schirck Setzler, copyright 2002. Used with permission of The Donning Company Publishers.